Haunt
by Unoriginality
Summary: Envy argues with a voice from his past.


Envy hated humans. Envy hated humans so much it twisted up his guts and left an acid taste in his mouth. They were stupid, disgusting, pathetic and worst of all, weak. It pained him to think that some distant part of himself, some alien and foreign part of his creation had once been one of these pathetic creatures.

_Not so alien and foreign, Envy._

He paced about the room restlessly, trying to ignore the voice that hadn't spoken, but whose voice rang in his ears and rattled around his brains like an unwelcome parasite, a ghost possessing and taking over him, refusing to be exorcised no matter what unholy rite he invoked against it.

"Shut up," he snarled finally, even though minutes had ticked by since the voice had spoken. The fire crackled and popped at him in the fireplace and he glanced over at it. It was the only thing that looked alive about the room, the only sign of life in the long since decimated and destroyed room that was once a bedroom, once a small boy's haven from the hell his mother created past those doors, a young man's place of solitude to study in peace, a sanctuary from the outside world.

Ironic. This was the only place he could escape Dante and her pushy and obnoxious demands, her subtle barbs and scorns that didn't cease, even after his death.

_You always come back here._

"She pisses me off," he replied curtly, stalking about the room, going over every detail of it even though he knew it all intimately.

The curtains were torn and left to hang on the broken curtain rod, half-fallen to the floor. The table was scratched and broken and one leg was missing almost completely; the desk was missing all of its drawers and papers, yellowed and rotting with age, were strewn about it haphazardly. The bed mattress was left half on the bed, half on the floor at a crazy angle, and the sheets were pulled most of the way across the room and left in a torn and ripped mess. The pictures on the mantle were all destroyed, and any signs of personal effects were gone.

Only a tiny bit of sunlight peeked through the dirtied window, though the window had almost miraculously survived the destruction that had swept through the room years ago.

_Mmm. It hurts too, doesn't it?_

Envy snarled as he made his way over to the bed stand. On the narrow and partly rotted piece of furniture sat a clock, old and worn with age, but otherwise in good condition, if a bit dusty.

It was the one thing he'd never been able to destroy, something inside of him twisting up and clinging to the clock instead whenever he tried. He picked it up and looked at its face. "Hurt?" he mumbled quietly, studying the familiar hands of the timepiece. They'd stopped moving years ago, the gears rusted and stuck from time.

_You keep coming back here because it's safe,_ the voice said with a quiet, almost _gentle_ sort of patience and tired maturity.

"I come back here," he snarled before the voice could say anything more, "because she fucking pisses me off and this is the only goddamn place she won't check."

_Is that really the only reason you come back here, Envy?_

He gripped the clock tightly, hands shaking with the effort to not clutch it with too much pressure and break it. "What iother/i reason would I have?" he growled.

_Why have you never destroyed that, Envy?_

He hated that voice. He hated that voice, he hated that the voice wouldn't go away, wouldn't shut up, and he hated even more that the voice was as much his own as it wasn't, and nothing he'd been able to do in the last three centuries had been able to change that, to separate that hateful human boy from himself, to leave behind nothing but the monster.

Envy looked at the clock in his hands. That old bastard had given it to his son, the last birthday he'd had before he'd died, miles from this place, miles from his father, his _home_...

The sin had never been able to destroy it, no matter how hard he tried.

"It's just a stupid clock." He sat down on the edge of the bed, not looking up from the gift.

_You can't do it, can you? Because you can't bear to get rid of the last of your humanity, no matter how much you fi-_

He growled low in his throat, a warning rattle that cut off the voice's words. "If you don't shut up, I swear-"

_You'll what, Envy? Kill me?_ the voice interrupted, irritatingly calm. _How? I'm dead. You can't kill a dead man. You ought to know that by now._

He smiled fangily at the reply. "I'll get rid of you someday."

_How does killing Father-_

"Stop calling him that!" he shrieked, jumping to his feet. "How can you still call that bastard that after he-" His words faltered and caught in his throat and he snarled, hackles raising in a defensive fight reaction. The conversation with the ghost of his past was picking each wound he kept so buried it became gangrenous until it opened and bled all over again. "He _**abandoned**_ us!"

That worked. The voice fell silent, and Envy seemed left to his darkness again. Slowly, he untensed.

_For the same reason you can't forgive him._

Envy flung the clock through the window with a wounded yell.


End file.
